1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a method and apparatus for controlling a data recording medium playback apparatus such as a video disc player or a video tape recorder (VTR).
2. Background Information
Legible printed media such as dictionaries, catalogs, guidebooks, etc., generally contain a number of photographs and other pictures and diagrams relating to descriptions, guidance material etc. which appear in the printed text. However due to space limitations, the number of such pictorial illustrations which can be provided is limited in extent. In recent years it has become possible to utilize a data recording medium playback apparatus such as a video disc player or a VTR capable of playback of various types of recorded image data, to record substantial amounts of image data including still pictures, moving pictures, or combinations of these, which are linked to respective sections of a document, e.g. to respective descriptive sections or guidance sections of the document. This enables for example image data corresponding to respective sections of a document such as a guidebook to be read out from a video disc and displayed on a monitor screen, while the reader is looking at a corresponding portion of the printed text of the document. Systems of this type have been developed, and enable large amounts of image data to be provided for various sections of such a book or document.
With prior art systems of this type, to enable readout from a video disc of image data which corresponds to a specific section of a document (e.g. an item in a guidebook), address data such as frame addresses are printed in the respective sections of the text. A search system is utilized to find appropriate id on the video disc. To perform readout of the image data relating to a specific section of the document, the operator (i.e. the person reading the document) inputs the corresponding address data to the search system, utilizing an operating unit such as a remote-control unit, and the required image data is then searched for, and is read out and displayed.
However with such a search system, it is necessary for the user to first confirm the frame number of the document section concerned, and to then use the operating unit to input the frame number to the search system. To do this it is of course necessary for the user to move his eyes from the document to the operating unit. As a result, the process of reading the document is temporarily interrupted, so that there is a deterioration of a correlated image formed in the user's mind on the basis of an image conveyed by the printed text and a pictorial image presented by the monitor display.